Nicaragua

The crew (for many more pictures, check out my facebook page...)

It was an all around amazing trip. My dad reminded me when I talked to him on New Years Day that when I was mulling over my decision to join the Peace Corps, one thing I was really hoping to get out of it was the opportunity to travel with other adventurous and like-minded people. This was exactly what I meant.
We had a great group: Adrienne, Chamisa, Brigitte, Jen and me. As we have all been living the Peace Corps life for the past 22 months, everyone is used to cold water, dirty feet, bumpy bus rides, gallo pinto, nothing being on time, and speaking Spanish. We all also like to eat well, be active, and go out (sometimes), so it was pretty ideal. Also, there were some of us who like to make the plans and lead the troops and others who were cool with just doing whatever we suggested. I’ll let you guess which category I fit into.
It took us about 10 hours to get from San José to Managua on Ticabus, and then we immediately got on a local bus to León, another two-hour trip. The bus “stations” are slightly less official in Nicaragua. You kind of just stand in an open space and all of a sudden a bus or mini-van pulls up and everyone starts yelling the destination at you and you run on to grab a spot.
We got to the Albergue León Hostel in the evening and immediately took to Fran, the hostel owner who also works as a lawyer for an organization that promotes sustainable tourism in Nicaragua. We had our own room and bathroom for $5 each a night, which helped us justify spending a little more money in the next few days on good food, iced coffees, and chocolate. León was a really cool colonial city that still isn’t developed for tourism beyond backpackers and a small population of ex-pats, which lent to its charm. There were 17 old Spanish churches, as well as a few museums commemorating the Sandinista revolution and some interesting communistic murals.
We soon discovered that telling locals we were living in Costa Rica got them all riled up, and though they didn’t hold it against us, they didn’t hold pack in railing on Ticos for how they have mistreated Nicas, taken land that was unrightfully theirs, and are culturally and historically vapid. After 22 months of cringing every time I hear a racist Nica joke in Costa Rica, it was interesting to hear the other side. What made me sad was that Fran, a highly educated and intelligent Nicaraguan, was the most passionate in his utter distaste for Costa Rica, which doesn’t bode well for their future relationship.
We ended our time in León with a fun night out on the town with Fran and Silvio, who had been our tour guide for our hike up Cerro Negro and volcano-boarding adventure. They took us to a salsa bar, where we met some fun Australians and we all continued on to the after-party, but not until we closed down the first place in a group hug singing Feliz Navidad. Trip highlight #1.
The next day we made our way to Granada, the more well-known and touristy colonial city in Nicaragua, where there were nicer hotels, the buildings and roads were in better and more modern condition, and there was a significant ex-pat community, which brought with it the benefit of GREAT restaurants, though not as cheap as León. Our hostel, the Oasis, was cute and clean, though not as intimate. We were all pretty beat and in bed early, but it was Christmas Eve and we soon discovered a local tradition: at midnight, the entire city erupts in fireworks set off in front of family homes. We had a pretty good view from the roof of our hostel, which was fun.
We spent Christmas kayaking and lounging at the nearby Laguna de Apoyo, followed by pizza dinner and dance party at the “be” discoteca in town. We met some crazy Brits who seemed to really like us and then ran into them at breakfast and they gave us totally blank stares and didn’t even remember where they had been the night before. The next day we checked out Masaya, a nearby town known for its artisan market, where we got in some quality speed-shopping. A final morning of strolling and museums concluded the urban portion of our travels, as we headed to “sea” in the afternoon.
Isla de Ometepe is an island made of two volcanoes in the middle of Lake Nicaragua, which is so huge that it looked like an ocean anywhere you turned on the island. We had our first major hitch in plans when the ferry we were planning to take was already full, but we were able to catch a bus to another ferry and enjoyed a beautiful sunset and met a Peace Corps Volunteer serving in Nicaragua on the boat, so it was interesting to compare notes.
A mini-bus picked us up and took us to our hotel. It was already dark so we couldn’t see much, but the road felt long and windy. El Porvenir had a very different feel from our first two hostels. It was super quiet and surrounded by nature. We ended up being given three large, clean rooms with their own bathrooms, which was a nice change, but it wasn’t as much of a hostel environment and the food wasn’t particularly good, so we decided to switch on our third night there to a hostel in Playa Santo Domingo, which was a little more of a town on the water, though unfortunately the beach had been flooded since October. We could enjoy the sound of the waves, but no swimming allowed.
We spent two super-active days there, the first exploring the island on these barely functional bikes our hotel rented out, and the second climbing Maderas Volcano. It was about an eight-hour hike in total, and the view of the other volcano and the entire island was amazing at our halfway point, but of course when we got to the top we couldn’t see a thing and it was cold and rainy and we ate as fast as we could and headed back down.
We all woke up the next morning barely able to move our legs, but the timing was fortuitous since we were heading for the last leg of our trip at a beach town where we were all ready for a vacation from our very exhausting vacation. We got to our final hostel in San Juan del Sur, Casa Amarilla, ready to kick back, but it turned out they had kind of messed up our reservation and two people would have to stay across the street in what turned out to be a family home. That didn’t sound so appealing, so Adrienne and I spent the next hour and a half going into hostel after hostel (and there were a LOT of hostels there) asking for a room for five girls. Although it pained many of the male hostel owners to do so, they all turned us down. It was the night before New Years Eve, and this whole town was packed.
By the time we got back, they had worked out an arrangement where we could all stay in the main house, just on two different floors. Our room still wasn’t ready, so we decided to go out for the night and deal with it later. It was a fun night of dancing at Iguana Bar, and we hung out with three Peace Corps Volunteers from El Salvador. Their stories made me feel really lucky I’m in Costa Rica…We got back to our hostel and had another room, but no pillows or towels and there was dog poop in the hall outside our room, which I promptly stepped in in the dark. Things at Casa Amarilla didn’t really get better from there, but since we had no other options, which just stayed out of it as much as we could.
We spent the next two days lounging on the beach, one day in San Juan del Sur and one day at a beautiful and more tranquilo nearby beach called Playa Maderas. For New Years Eve, we crashed the barbeque party at the coolest hostel in town and made some friends and got some flip cup games going and then rang in the new year on the beach. We discovered yet another tradition involving bootleg fireworks, this time in the form of stuffed life-sized dolls that were placed in random spots in front of stores and houses around town and all blew up at midnight and smelled really bad after.
Anyways, I realized I have spent the past two New Years Eves on beautiful Central American beaches with good friends. For a holiday I have never really liked, that’s pretty great.
The last leg of our journey was the most annoying, but not enough to put a damper on our trip. We left Casa Amarilla at 6 am on Sunday, January 2nd (one man down, Jen had left the day before) and got to the border by 6:35. We did not get in a bus on the other side of the border to head to San José until noon. It took about three and a half hours to get our passports stamped to get out of Nicaragua, then another hour and a half to enter Costa Rica, and then another half hour just to get on a bus. I guess we picked the absolute worst day of the year to come back, plus it was crazy disorganized and there was only one line for people entering and leaving the country, plus there was a whole black market going to cut the line, which we were morally against but became increasingly appealing as we stood there in the sun without moving.
But we made it and eventually all went our separate ways back to community life, excited about certain luxuries like clean towels, slightly higher water pressure, and flushable toilets, but sad to end what had been a pretty unbeatable and incredibly memorable 12 days across the border.